I dreamed last night
Of being plagued by a stupendous

Hunger
And seeing the moon turn into a tangerine so

Ripe
Of plucking it right out of its silky, tousled

Bed
Of biting hastily into it, breaking past its taut

Flesh 
Consuming its innards, the sour and sweet

Juices
Spilling over the curves and corners of my

Lips
Tracing sticky saccharine paths down my

Neck
I wiped my overfull mouth with the backs of my

Fingers
Opening again to languidly run my tinging

Tongue 
Over its ridges and calderas, the untouched

Crevices 

Of inhaling the heady scent of its moonshine

Sweat
The sound of moaning and the mounting

Rhythm

Like drumbeats rising to a lascivious

Crescendo

My eyes flutter open; not strangely, I think of
You 

And so I drink all the poetry I can find,

Letting it spill and wash over me 

Letting the words reach the places I can't 

A Pinter pause

I’ve been holding out, turning the outside inwards

The truth is, I was (and am) trying to find the words

The right ones to describe what I feel

(Will I ever find them like I once did? I cannot say.)

 

Things without legs still crawling up and down my spine at night

They whisper things in my ear and fill me with dread and fright

I hum aloud and try to drown their voices and the noises

I scrub myself raw to wash off the feeling of them on me

 

I recognise the dissociation, the practiced breakaway

But haven’t you left bits of you in haunting places far away

Some distraction, some potion for forgetting

Some liquid courage, some warm body to lose yourself in

 

I’m a hoarder of memories of any and every kind    

They lie askance in the dusty attic of my mind

The proud stand centrestage; others lie shrouded like a life’s remains

That way I can like the world better, even like myself better

 

Poetry knows no pretense; these verses, they cannot lie

Thus do they betray me, leave me lying naked beneath the night sky

Like a great still lake, the velveteen expanse mirrors my darkness

Leaving me no place to hide, no place to run away

 

I don’t mean to eschew these feelings forevermore

Just some time, some silence to mend what’s sore

To take what’s left and start afresh, build anew

To reclaim myself, to be (maybe for the first time) whole and true

Blocked writer

All ye who love the written word

Has it to you ever occurred

A glorious vision conjures itself up in your mind  

A lacework of gilded thoughts of every colour and kind

Only to dissipate prematurely like wisps of vapour

Alas! Too long did it take for pen to meet paper

Yellow-white the sheet of paper
Stop running, it says
Drop the façade, hang up the cloak,
Sit, it's time, it says

I know you, I will see you
In your hastily pencilled (erasable) words
Some barely whispers and others gashes
I will take them all, it says

There's bloodletting overdue
Drain your excesses here, won't you
Tucked away I am from all and sundry
I will never betray you, it says

There's a stoop in your back and
A draw upon your mouth
The spark's been fanned into an inferno
Put it out before it kills you, it says 

Always haven't I been your receptacle
Give me your absolute truth, it says
I will be your mirror, your sanctuary or
your keeper forevermore, it says

A question of belonging

This land does not belong to me; It is not my land, 

Through no act of volition was I born here,

Instead of the across one of those concocted borders,

A chance event, nothing more; for better or worse, I do not know

This is not my land any more than that clear azure expanse is my sky, 

Or the sun that warms my bones this cold day is my sun, 

Or the wind that sweeps my hair into a frenzy  is my wind, 

Or the ocean that spiritedly spritzes me with salt and sand is my ocean, 

This land does not belong to me; rather, I belong to this land, 

This belonging, a roughly hewn and sewn garb, 

For here have I laughed, longed, loved, lost, lusted, laboured,

Here, on this land, is the only home I have ever known 

This land to which I belong never asked me if I have a god,

Where my parents came from; what tongue I spoke, the colours of my ensign,

What I put in my mouth to sate my hunger or what I drank to sate my mind, 

It didn’t ask me who I love; nor did it worry about the things I hate

Now you say that this land belongs to you, 

A you made up of those who raise these questions,

A you of who'd spill the blood of this land's children upon her, 

A ‘you’ that won't let there be an 'us', a 'you' that defines a 'them'

But this land does not belong to you, it is not your land,

And it's only time until you are extradited from the 'you',

By the very lines you are carving into her red-golden-brown-black earth,

By your flesh and blood, your kith and kin, your peculiarities painted onto your skin

And when it's your turn to lay claim to your home,

I bid you remember who threw the first stone,

Who off-ed the heads and broke the backs,

Of all those to whom their home belongs